Ushahidi releases v3.8

A new mode for managing data

To help your team quickly triage and manage data, we have created a new interface: data mode. This new feature facilitates better searching, browsing, filtering and processing of data by placing it in a richer context.

The data mode allows you to simultaneously edit, review, and compare your Posts. The new mode combines our previous Timeline mode and our Post view/edit mode, allowing you to view individual Posts in the context of all related data.

By combining these views, our goal is to dramatically reduce the distance and effort between analysis of and interaction with your data.

Get notified of new posts

Data mode pro-actively brings information to you. When new Posts arrive, the data mode will notify you and and allow you to immediately update the view.

In the past, you had to manually update your filters to ensure you were working with the most up-to-date information. Now, the system intelligently checks for new Posts based on your current filtering and search criteria.

Post Locking

To make data processing and analysis more collaborative, we're releasing Post locking. When you start editing a Post, it will be locked and other users cannot edit, update, or accidentally interfere with your work. When you finish working and save or close the post, it is automatically unlocked again. Conversely, if you need to edit a Post that is currently locked you will be able to quickly find out which of your colleagues is working on it and coordinate changes with them.

To avoid issues with Posts remaining locked, we have introduced a set of safeguards to ensure that the Posts will always return to an unlocked state.

Locks expire after 5 minutes, to avoid locking a post when someone is not actively working on it

When a user logs out, all of their locked posts will be unlocked

Administrators have the right to “break” a lock to ensure that a Post becomes available again in a time sensitive situation

Even when locked for edit, all users who have permission are able to view and review the Post

Improved Filters

This release includes a major update of the way you filter posts, with the aim of making filtering less confusing and less prone to bugs. You can now view and select all your filters and sorting options in a single dropdown, available in both map and data view.

While the filters in the map view continue to be applied as you add them, the data view allows users to group and apply or clear all their filters at once. As you make changes to filtered posts, the list will be updated to reflect that.

This gif shows the list updating after changing the post to "Published", it no longer matches the active "Archive" status filter, selecting the next post in line instead.

Speed up getting the user's location when they submit a post by caching the last location we had

Post Validation:

Fixed validation on required location and media fields

Posts from SMS/Twitter/Email can now be assigned to forms with required fields

Fix stalled CSV downloads where some large files would get stuck downloading forever

Auto detect OS9 line endings in CSVs

Fix Collections and Saved Searches being saved without an owner

Task visibility changes: When editing posts, a task set as 'internal only' will only be visible only to users with "Manage post permissions". It may still be visible to general users when published based on the "Show when published" setting

Fix issues where long category names were truncated without warning

URLs provided in the content for text fields of the surveys should be clickable when viewing the corresponding posts

Other improvements

Anonymous API requests no longer use tokens. This reduces the overhead of getting auth tokens, and greatly improves performance of the platform for logged out users All privileged information is still protected

Support for Google Places API when searching for locations

Prompt self hosted admins to change username and password on first login

Improve caching to ensure we always clean out expired data, and make better use of data we have cached